Tag: burnout

2018 was a special year.

Einstein knew that time and space are relative. Some years have more impact on your life than others. For me, 2018 was very special. Why? Well, I am writing this on the last day of 2018 and it seems to me, the lessons learned 2018 were like three years compressed into a single one. So many things happened, so many changes, so much stuff to learn — stunned.

Health: thanks to my personal trainer I really managed to show up in the gym frequently — 5,87 a month.

Work: after a long journey from a monastery to cardiac irregularities, I came to the conclusion, some grass does not get greener — even if you paint it.

Friends: hey, they are still the foundation of everyday life, even if you don’t see them on a daily basis. Thank you!

Human beings: even though I know, that everybody is a supporter for you, I got an extra lesson this year. Some people really manage to hide a professional confused soul in a beautiful shell. And some still do not understand the principles of Karma — or whatever you call it.

Wisdom: I did not know, how extremely lovely it is, to stand above the clouds, have a drink and see the sun dive into the clouds. What a sunset. Wow.

Inspiration: best keynote I have seen in 2018 was by Christian Wehner. Thanks man!

Social Media: thanks to Jaron Lanier, I did finally quit most of it and actually focus more on shit that really matters. Merci, Jaron – I owe you some beers!

My lessons learned 2018

The shortest distance between two points might be a straight line. Which is basically 1D — one dimension. Flat. And so is the knowledge you gain. But life is so much more than endless scrolling and tapping on a heartless device. Read more books. Start more real life conversations. Make mistakes. Learn. Help your friends. Surprise people with random acts of kindness. Surprise your-self, eg. make a trip to India. Namaste!

SleepyOne Ayurveda Beach Resort Day 5 – fish can fly

Fish can fly!! Imagine you sit totally chillaxed on the veranda after two hours of Ayurveda treatment. The world is good. Out of nowhere, a fish falls from the sky and lands in front of you with a big, fat’n’wet SPLAT!!! The near to realtime Big Data analysis of this unstructured data revealed the obvious: the fish did not survive the rough landing.Since the cosmos sometimes is very funny, it did wait a few seconds more to present his miracle. A bunch of crows were showing up and debating who owns the fish. For a moment they seemed to be unsure, if the fish now belongs to me. A quick check of the poor fish made it clear – definitely for the crows.
Half an hour later, their fast food was still in the entrance area enriching the flavour of pure Indian air. Picked up the phone, pressed #9 and I talked to the guy at the reception:

Guy: …… ??? …. (did not understand) … how can I help you?
Me: Hello, this is room #201. First of all, this is NO joke! There is a fish on the veranda.
Guy: (WTF)??? A WHAT?
Me: A fish.
Guy: A fish.
Me: Yes, a fish. Some crows dropped it.
Guy: Aaaaaaah! Housekeeping will remove it.
Me: Thank you.

Hey! I warned him, that its no joke. Oh well.

Today I noticed a strange looking mark on my left ankle.

It looked like a mini vampire bite. Or a snake bite (not the drink). My 10-fingers Ayurveda doctor examined it in detail. Brave me asks “is it a snake bite?” Doctor “no, they look different”. And then comes the strange part: Doctor “did you see an ANIMAL?” A what?Finally I got a detoxicating Ayurveda medicine. So far, I feel OK. Knock, knock, knock. On wood.

Alaa from Kuwait proposed it might have been a tiny dragon. Maybe. It’s India and coming back from dinner, a crab crossed my path. A crab.

Today I got my slimming water in a pink (?) thermos can. The waiter had this invisible smirk in his face. Hm. Since my diet doctor “proposed” me to drink slimming water, I eat two plates for lunch. And maybe dinner. Ayurveda is about balance, right?

Talking about food – in Ayurveda the general rule for a meal is:

2/4 solid food (potatoes, rice, …)

1/4 fluid food (soup, warm tea, …)

1/4 empty (space, nothing, nada, …)

If you ate too much, like me in the past, you feel like a balloon after the meals. In addition BE with the meal. Look at it, chew slowly. Why? Your stomach has NO idea what you fill in unless you scan your food/ meal. At least half of your eating time.

To help your body system, it would be great if you can implement 3 eating time windows. For example:

6-9am: breakfast

11am-2pm: lunch

6-8pm: dinner

No snacking in between. It was, and still is, hard for me. Depending on what time you get up in the morning, try to finish dinner early like before 8pm. Hi to all the French and Spanish guys! 🙂

So why? Because your stomach needs some time to digest and then needs rest. If you eat too late, digestion and sleep will overlap. Often resulting in low quality sleep. Reminds me of somebody…
Let’s say digestion is done by 10pm, the body can rest, or fast, until 6am. Time to break the fasting with… breakfast! When you wake up, can you immediately hold your best presentation of the year? Maybe not. Same for the stomach. A slow start with, e.g. an oatmeal and an apple would be delightful. Oh, I forgot, start breakfast with a glas of warm water. Yes, I did laugh, too. In the past.

SleepyOne Ayurveda Beach Resort Day 4 – being tired

Today I was SO tired. My UP-Coach tells me I reached my sleeping goal by 109%! Still, I feel tired. At breakfast, the waiter asked me “How are you, sir?”, I always answer with the truth. People who answer with “all fine” or “thank you, how are you?” are suspicious to me.

Some years ago, a good friend of mine started to answer “all is super great!” and smiled. It was obvious, that it wasn’t a true smile. He got divorced 12 months later. From later, back to the waiter.

So I told him, how tired I am. Surprisingly he said, he did not sleep well the last two days. He felt tired, too. Good man.At the Ayurveda center, I am still tired. My cosmic doctor with 11 fingers asks me “how do you feel today?”, you guess the answer. Finally she reveals the explanation “yes, powder massages are very tiring”.

Sometimes, it’s refreshing when you know WHY you feel so tired.

Did you know the roots of Ayurveda are traced back to the Himalaya where some Aryan dudes came over with horses from… ? I was quite baffled when the guide talked about it. Also, it totally surprised me that he seemed to like a “German connection”, too. His eyes were glowing when he showed us an OLD Grundig pocket radio: “It still works!”
Anil is a great curator, enchanting and his heart beats for Ayurveda. It makes my heart jump when I see such lovely beings 🙂 When in Kerala, make sure to stop by the www.ayurvedamuseum.com. Bring 3 hours of time with you. And remember, only drink bottled water, originally sealed. And your feet will get wet. Or washed.

And there is even another sort of basil. Amazing – I wonder if the Italians are aware of so many different sorts. Will have to ask Massimo.

SleepyOne Ayurveda Beach Resort, Day #1.

My Ayurveda doctor has 6 fingers but only on her left hand. When I first saw it, better, when my eyes first saw it, I did not see it. It took my brain some time to find something similar to bring it to my attention. Suddenly a scene from the movie GATTACA popped into my mind. A genetically „optimised“ piano player had 6 fingers but on both of his hands. There were special piano concerts for two hands with 6 fingers. Is she a better doctor with 11 fingers? Why am I here?

Today I was wondering when we stop to ask important questions, why are bananas yellow, why is the sky blue, are red chilies spicier than the green ones, why is the upload of this wifi connection so slow? Today I ate a green banana! And yes, it was 100% ready and super yummy! There are green bananas on earth!

So when and why do we stop?

Why do we settle for mediocre knowledge and TV-wisdom? Guess we, include me, got lazy. No more standing up to switch a TV-channel. If you read this later than 2030… well a TV was something like Youtube. But only with 3 channels. Fixed. In content and time. The future was very predictive, two weeks ahead, no surprises. Is surprise a negative or positive feeling for you… and why?

In the evolution of mankind surprises could mean: a tiger jumps into your cave and eats your BAE for dinner. Not funny, unless you are the tiger. Building fences helped to minimise surprises. Oh! And a gate, we need a great GATE.

Can you see a connection between the evolution of remotes and the rise of fast food? With only 3 channels, the marketing departments would have had a hard time to explain the use of the buttons 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. So we got more TV-channels. When we passed around 30+ channels, the print media got a bit nervous. The TV-future became more and more less predictive. TV-shows and movies on demand changed the way we lived, how we shop and when. The fixed plan to prepare meals got corrupted and et voilà, fast food is here!

Why waste time for cooking? Just plug in something, pizza, chips… even eatable in the dark.

These days, 2016, the remotes – we call them „smart“-phones now – can also display the content. In other words, we eliminated the way from the couch to the TV. Less steps, great! That’s why we need fitness trackers now to tell us if we reached our goals. Smart.

In an Ayurveda lesson today, a 10-finger doctor spoke about several rules or daily routines. One was about sweating. His point was: people hop from one AC to the next. Automatic climate controlled spaces everywhere. Home, car, work. If you live in Iceland, well, think about something else.

Our skin is like a firewall, or a security system. If we don’t sweat on a regular basis, daily…, we don’t get rid of stinky stuff. Nature designed our temple, the body, very intelligently but we are smart a$$es these days. Maybe that’s why we don’t like surprises. The „everything under control“ feeling is much more powerful. I guess, that is why we get some illnesses from time to time. To teach us modesty.

Lessons learned in 2016

My personal keyword for 2016 is: health. So essential and yet so overlooked, underestimated and out of focus in our busy lives. We take it for granted, most times we take little responsibility but feel huge anger when our body gives us signals. How did my Ayurveda chief doctor in India say „our bodies are wonderful machines“. Again, all starts with the monkeys in our head.

„You are what you think.“ Buddha, Ghandi, your brain, any TV, …

What’s going on inside your head? Are you the BOSS of your neurons? How do you sleep? Some say, we are all connected. If we talk about the internet, nobody would disagree. And then again, is your consciousness connected to your body signals? Do you notice them AND do you take action according to them?

Maybe you like to work a lot to feel needed. Your body is your greatest supporter and delivers more for less over a real long period. A day filled with 8 hours of work, or 9, 10, well, more is possible, too. At one point, you feel out of balance but that’s a relative feeling. There are a lot of tricky things to make you feel „back in the game“. They even work for a little while and your body keeps sending you signals. Off course, you can also ignore the red flashing low fuel sign in your car. Finally, your body will tell you when it needs your immediate attention and pulls in the hard brakes. You know it: „oh hello sickness“ or if you are on the professional level „oh hello hospital“.

Do we learn from it? Hopefully. For a little while in the aftershock we are super sensible, cautious, enlightened and eat super healthy, treat our body first class, pray and what else is needed to get it back on track. And then, laziness strikes back. No signals, no attention, bring on the champagne and potato chips!

In the last few years, I seen too many good people die way too early. Life is short. And just recently I had to disagree with my best friend in London about „everything is under control“. Nothing is under control. Think about it. We don’t even know if our galaxy is inside a dream of a squirrel and thats the real reason why the world is going nuts these days!

My lessons learned in 2016?

Life is short.

Your health is your wealth.

Life is a journey, only travel with those, who will catch you in case you fall.

Another day in paradise or why life is so lovely

Not everyday feels like another day in paradise. Some start weird, tired, sad or a mixture of all. Recently a workmate died very unexpectedly and way too early. Most of us were shocked, sad or just did not want to believe it.

Right now, it’s just like he is still on holidays.

Yesterday was his funeral. It was sunny, hot and a bit windy. If you wear a black suit with a tie while standing in the direct sunlight, it’s like waiting for the overheating alert on your mobile phone. My brain was about to complain not being within acceptable operating temperatures, but thankfully the ZEN switch kicked in and suddenly I was very happy to be alive!

Life is so lovely outside your comfort zone!

Why do we (I) need funerals or serious illnesses to really understand that each day is another day in paradise? When you wake up tired or feel totally like a sleepy one, there are at least two options:

hating the day, work, life and every mosquito on the planet

modeling a micro grin and being thankful for another day in paradise

Do you remember how many training lessons your brain needed to keep you in balance on a bicycle? Our brain needs our help for a better morning routine! Some ideas of a better foundation for your day:

realize you are awake, breathe in and out, smile

stand up (slowly) and drink a glass of (warm) water

do a short meditation for 1-2 minutes

eat something light like an oatmeal with an apple

surprise somebody with a special smile 🙂

At the end of the day, or your life, all those little things changed us. A smile, a motivating „we will make it!“ or a friendly „good morning“. Thank you!

How is your work life balance in 2016 so far? Yes, we all have plans, but sometimes it seems, that God just laughs about them.

An emergency surgery was not in my plans for 2016! Total reset of my work life balance.

If you love your job (or not), it happens that youare going towork overtime. What starts in homeopathic doses can quickly end up in a supersize meal. To commute daily between home and work burns out additional time. Maybe you know the feeling:

There is never enough time.

In our work life balance pie, the percentage share of work is continuously growing. We trick our brain in thinking that everything is still fine. Hey, it’s still a full pie! While the shareholder value of life is invisibly shrinking, balance is silently fading into the background.
When there is not enough time, we start to postpone things: Meetings with friends and family, our hobbies, dreams and health. Food is just something on the sidetrack, time for cooking is rare and meditation is pure luxury. At some point, the cosmos (or the empire) strikes back.

To be under general anesthetic is like somebody pushed the reset button. While sliding back into your very own reality, I bet you are not immediately pondering about work related problems. A fluffy void embraces you. Painkiller pancake peace.Being out of balance inevitably attracts stress which sooner or later leads topain. No, not the French baguette! The real one, like something is tearing you apart, physically or mentally. That’s the moment for baseball:

Balance is the bat, work the ball and life is your home run.

Below are notes I have taken for my work life balance in the fluffy void.

More heart:

To oneself.

Personal.

Job wise.

Wait less, do:

Fulfill dreams yourself. Do not wait for somebody who MAYBE will satisfy yours.

Communicate your ideas.

Share your opinion in shorter intervals. If they like it or not.

Love.

Live.

Work.

Hamsters do love their wheels and that’s OK. Work life balance is not something you can buy in a shopping mall or book in a travel agency. Finding your personal work life balance is work (ha!), but finally it’s an investment in your most important shareholder: your life.

Lessons learned in 2015 explained:

One: the impossible is possible. Trust your intuition, listen what people really say (or NOT say), help them to achieve their goals, lead, live and do what you say. Oh, and if you make a mistake, admit it – people will understand and help you.

Two: death is all around us. And that’s ok. I still turn my hourglass twice a day to remind myself to use my time wisely.

Three: having a gym-membership does not automatically keep you fit. Plan your health-schedule like priority 1 meetings. And find somebody to kick your a$$.

Four: some people are so nice. They smile and give you hugs. Then life throws money on the table and suddenly they transform to Gollum “My precious!”.

Five: Friends. You can’t buy friends. And they are not for free. Be a friend and if you have a handful true friends, you are a lucky one.

Desktop wallpaper for lessons learned in 2015 is 2048 x 1365 px. Parallax iPhone wallpaper please find below. Make sure to click the pix until they are full-size, then save on your device. Hope they are useful for you.

Living in 2015 can be a real digital mystique.

Keeping all your devices, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, etc. up to date can be a real challenge. On the next level, you worry about the kids getting lost in the World Wide Web, while losing your mind explaining your mom that WiFi really does not need a cable!

You have to be a Superhero today.

Sarah Granger (@sarahgranger) wrote a great manual to tackle the daily challenges in our brave new world. The Digital Mystique is a journey through life, love, hope and fears. Sarah will share many stories from her own life and remind you several times, about the importance of friends and community support.

Friends don’t let friends do stupid things – alone.” Unknown

Since this blog is about stress, yes, the digital mystique can be a real relief. Reading how Sarah started her digital career in 1982 and knowing, how gracefully she challenged her brand new iPhone 6 to compete against gravity, makes her a real Superhero of the Digital Mystique. Thank you for the awesome book and letter, Sarah!